Newport Beach’s mayor on Monday criticized a state law that prevents the city from using resources for federal immigration enforcement after a group of immigrants on a boat were detained outside Newport Beach.
Mayor William O’Neal said the U.S. Coast Guard spotted the 34-foot vessel “acting erratically” a mile west of Newport Beach last Thursday evening, with 21 people attempting to enter the country illegally. He said the ship he was on was stopped.
O’Neill said most of the people on the boat were Mexican, but there were also one Russian and two Uzbek nationals.
“It is clearly an abnormal situation, or at least should be, that there are people illegally entering our country from Uzbekistan through Mexico on boats off the coast of Orange County,” Newport Beach’s mayor said in a social media post. ” he said in a social media post.
O’Neill continued that while the Coast Guard is allowed to cooperate with Customs and Border Protection to enforce immigration laws, the Coast Guard and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department are not allowed to cooperate because of SB 54. He said he was prohibited from doing so. California is a so-called sanctuary state.
“SB54 severely limits the extent to which local law enforcement agencies can cooperate with federal authorities to enforce immigration laws,” O’Neal said, adding that he and the Newport Beach City Council unanimously approved the same in 2017. He explained his reasons for opposing the bill.
Orange County Sheriff Don Burns has also long called for the repeal of SB54, saying the state’s conservation policies are making his county “less safe.”
“Instead of protecting immigrant communities, this law allows criminals to be released, often returned to the immigrant communities they prey on, and reintroduced new immigrants,” Burns said in a 2020 social media post. It’s creating a lot of victims.”
SB 54 made OC less secure. The two-year social science experiment with sanctuary laws must end. Rather than protecting immigrant communities, this law released criminals back into the immigrant communities they often preyed on, allowing them to create new victims. https://t.co/QyPMcPD5OU
— OC Sheriff Don Barnes (@OCSheriffBarnes) February 3, 2020
NBC Los Angeles has reached out to Governor Newsom’s office for a response to criticism of the sanctuary state law policy.
The Coast Guard said all detained migrants were transferred to U.S. Customs and Borden Patrol.
